Elon Musk appeared almost boyish back in April 2011 as he unveiled the Falcon Heavy rocket to a handful of reporters at the National Press Club. Still in his 30s, Musk had yet to become an international celebrity, and his efforts to transform the aerospace and automotive industries had not fully flowered. As such, this reveal lacked the splashy theatrics of Musk’s more recent rocket unveiling events.

Despite the pedestrian backdrop, this was quintessential Elon—sharing a vision, making bold promises, and sniping irreverently at his competition. “This is a rocket of truly huge scale,” Musk said during an unveiling of the rocket at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. “This is something America can be really proud of, a vehicle with twice the capability of the shuttle and Delta IV Heavy.”

The announcement came at a bleak moment for the US space industry. The space shuttle would make its final flight just three months later, leaving the United States without a way to get its astronauts in orbit. Launch costs for other US rockets were steadily rising. NASA’s exploration plans were muddled. America was going nowhere fast.

Amid this malaise, Musk offered hope. With a single Falcon Heavy rocket, he said, the United States could fly a crew of astronauts around the Moon. With two, it could land humans on the Moon and bring them back. NASA might return a sample of Martian rock to Earth with a single Falcon Heavy launch.

When, a reporter asked, might the Falcon Heavy be ready to fly? Musk explained that he thought SpaceX would roll out the big rocket to a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base, near the company’s headquarters in Southern California, in November or December of 2012. “The launch itself is more difficult to predict,” he admitted. But probably sometime the following year.

Falcon Heavy news conference in April 2011.

SpaceX, of course, did end up rolling the Falcon Heavy out to a launch pad in December. Of 2017.

Along the way, Musk’s competitors in the aerospace business have snickered behind his back about the oft-delayed rocket, ridiculing his ability to meet schedules. They’ve also suggested that trying to fly a booster with 27 engines will meet the same fate as the Soviet N-1 rocket. Four times, from 1969 to 1972, the Russians attempted to launch their titanic “Moon rocket,” and it failed spectacularly each time. Its 30 engines were just too many to fire, throttle, and steer at the same time.

But there is one thing the critics can’t take from Musk now. His rocket shatters an increasingly stale paradigm that has limited the ambitions of the US launch industry from the beginning. Traditionally, NASA or the military has given industry a design for a rocket and provided funds to develop, test, and then fly the booster. Musk has upended that model.

Nearly a decade ago SpaceX privately developed and launched its Falcon 1 rocket—a single core with a single engine—and delivered a payload into orbit. No private company had ever done that before. This achievement helped win SpaceX a contract from NASA to finish the Falcon 9 rocket, which is now carrying cargo to the International Space Station. Subsequently, using private investments, SpaceX has bootstrapped that Falcon 9 technology into the world’s most powerful rocket, twice over. With the Falcon Heavy, the US government will have a brand new launch capability for which it has not paid a dime.

This year, finally, the Falcon Heavy rocket should fly.

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The launch could come as early as February.

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The rocket has a core stage and two side-mounted boosters.

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The Falcon Heavy will be twice as powerful as any rocket in current service.

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The first launch is a test flight, so it will carry a whimsical payload.

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Here, we see Elon Musk's Tesla roadster.

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Yes, it's really going to be shot out toward Mars.

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And it will be playing David Bowie.

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Some have said this is shameless cross-promotion of Musk's Tesla brand.

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We'd suggest that since he paid for the rocket, and has a history of having fun with maiden launches of vehicles, Musk is entitled to launch whatever the heck he wants.

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At first blush, the Falcon Heavy’s maiden launch carries a whimsical payload—Musk’s own midnight cherry red Tesla Roadster. But far more significant is where that Roadster will go. No company has ever launched a private payload beyond geostationary orbit before. Yet Musk intends to launch the Tesla into an elliptical orbit around the Sun, a Hohmann Transfer Orbit, that will bring the vehicle near Mars.

This orbit is critical to understanding how Musk plans to sell the rocket and what its flight, after all these years of waiting, means for the aerospace industry.

A better Falcon 9

Now that the big rocket’s launch appears imminent, a pertinent question is who will use it. When Musk revealed plans for the heavy lift booster in 2011, the single-core Falcon 9 had only flown twice. In its original configuration, this rocket had a lift capacity of just 10.5 tons to low-Earth orbit. Two years later, SpaceX would fly version 1.1 of the rocket, which, thanks to improvements in the Merlin engines, had an increase in performance to 13.2 tons.

With that lift, the Falcon 9 could begin to throw smaller satellites all the way to geostationary transfer orbit. But at that point, SpaceX still needed the Falcon Heavy to launch larger commercial satellites into this higher orbit, where they could hold their position over the planet in one general location.

SpaceX kept iterating on the Falcon 9 rocket, however, changing materials, introducing the use of densified propellant to cram more fuel in its tanks, and working on the Merlin rocket engines.

In December 2015, the company flew the “Full Thrust” version of the Falcon 9 for the first time. The new rocket had the capability to perform a propulsive landing, and on its maiden flight the new booster made the company’s first safe landing by returning to the Florida coast. As eye-catching as this landing was, the new rocket’s performance was equally stunning, as SpaceX engineers had boosted its capability by more than 40 percent. The new Falcon 9 FT could lift a staggering 23 tons to low-Earth orbit.

Further Reading

A final version of the Falcon 9 rocket, dubbed Block 5, should debut later this year. Upgrades for this variant will focus on lowering the cost and time to refurbish a rocket from landing to launch. However, the new rocket will probably also feature another performance increase of about 10 percent, or more, in lift capacity.

Essentially, then, SpaceX will have nearly tripled the capability of the Falcon 9 rocket from 2011 to 2018, the period between the unveiling of the Falcon Heavy and its eventual flight. This means that many of the heavier payloads that once might have flown on the bigger rocket can now be accommodated by the single core Falcon 9.

A 6-ton Inmarsat communications satellite, designed for geostationary orbit, was originally scheduled as one of the Falcon Heavy's first customers. But a Falcon 9 Full Thrust, operating in an expendable mode, had enough power to deliver the satellite to its desired orbit. So for less money, and a more timely launch, the Inmarsat satellite rode a Falcon 9 rocket into space last May.

Thanks for one of the best articles I've read in a while on ARS. Looking very much forward to seeing three boosters land successfully at the same time! And hopefully a great picture of a red roadster floating through space...

Very interesting analysis in the article. I am really looking forward to the launch of Falcon Heavy, hoping it will go off without a hitch. My family and I will probably sit glued in front of the telly watching the live cast. The BFR is an even more exciting prospect, although the Falcon Heavy might end up being more impressive to watch, the three separate cores configuration does look quite ace!

Given that there will be likely similar delays in developing the BFR I think the article is a bit over negative concerning the Falcon Heavy.

If they can get the three first stage cores back unscathed, it gives them the extra capacity to carry things like 2nd-stage heatshield, additional 2nd-stage landing fuel, and recovery parachutes on the farings which would then be effecively a complete re-usable rocket - perhaps with a similar capacity to a F9 with a single use upper stage.

If the only cost attibutable to a launch is the fuel, it doesn't matter how big your rocket is - prices will tumble.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

Sure, Musk is behind schedule on his new reusable giant rocket.

And exactly how well is the Senate Launch System budget and timeline coming along?

The real killer app of the Falcon Heavy, is the democratisation of Space based research. Those institutions/corporations currently reliant on NASA/ESA for their science planning, a conglomerate of university astronomy and astrophysics departments for example, can now begin to look at preparing their own missions, according to their own parameters and schedules.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

The kind of old guard executives that are incapable of thinking past next quarters earnings statements. The kind of old guard executives that think the only thing a company exists for is to provide "maximum shareholder value". In other words, absolute fucking idiots and their purchased Congressional lickspittles.

I just realized something awesome about what Elon Musk is doing with his Tesla - imagine his conversation with the DMV.

"Hi, I'd like to deregister my car.""Was it stolen, written off in an accident or did you sell it?""None of those. I launched it into space."*silence*"Um hmm. Sir, I'm going to need to call my supervisor. Our forms don't currently have an option for 'I launched my vehicle to Mars.'"

I just wonder if anyone bothered to test the Tesla Roadster for flight-worthiness. It would be a shame if the whole flight ended in disaster because the Tesla became an unbalanced load due to a bent chassis or was shaken until parts fell off. Has anyone tested the batteries for their ability to withstand a vacuum?

I doubt it would go with its Li-ion pack. It's an unnecessary flight risk

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

Musk explicitly said (in a conference call about Model 3, iirc) something like this: you're going to miss deadlines anyways, so just make sure that you have aggressive ones.

I like that thinking, it's more or less the same as Parkinson's Law ("work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion") + uncertainties.

Falcon Heavy is exactly the kind of capability that's needed as an alternative to the ludicrously expensive SLS.

I wouldn't expect it to radically change what we do in space for a while yet though. Payloads that can really take advantage of its capability, such as big space telescopes, will be very expensive. For missions like that, the price of the rocket is often almost a rounding error so the availability of Falcon Heavy won't necessarily save enough money to make these flagship missions much more common.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

The thing is that if you outright hate all what Musk represents (which is mainly treating reality as a physics engine and believing that you can solve even seemingly unsolvable problems by dividing them into smaller, solvable problems and then solve these smaller problems) he gives you lots of excuses for criticizing him. There are people who WANT to see him fail because if he doesn't fail THEY are proven to be just losers. He threatens the comfortable cynical resignation some people nurse all their lives.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

I mean he may fail, he may not. I certainly think some of his ideas area little far fetched (Hyperloop....) but whatever, at least he's putting his money where his mouth is. Plenty enough "good businessmen" out there who just exist to sit and collect royalties, dividends, and stock options and not actually get out there and create.

Nobody remembers the who the 50th richest man in the USA in 1900 but we all know who broke-ass Tesla was.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

Alright, snark aside, while I don't think your acquaintance has his reasoning right, I do think Musk is "failing" at his SpaceX business as a business.

He could be charging way more for these rockets. Who's honestly competing with him? For how much per launch?

But he's not. He wants to push the industry forward as his first and foremost goal. He's going to drag the entire industry kicking and screaming. It's going to affect billions of people after, what, 20 years of the company existing? We're going to see previously unthinkably large low-orbit satellite clusters where we can just replace the ones that fall out of the sky for cheap.

The BFR is what I'm really really excited about. The design is so "simple" compared to multi-stage rockets that we could plausibly see them used more like airplanes than space rockets. When I first saw the renders my thoughts (as a not-rocket-scientist) were initially "we can do that?" followed by "why haven't we been doing this already then?" and I can't imagine I'm the only one.

I just realized something awesome about what Elon Musk is doing with his Tesla - imagine his conversation with the DMV.

"Hi, I'd like to deregister my car.""Was it stolen, written off in an accident or did you sell it?""None of those. I launched it into space."*silence*"Um hmm. Sir, I'm going to need to call my supervisor. Our forms don't currently have an option for 'I launched my vehicle to Mars.'"

I just realized something awesome about what Elon Musk is doing with his Tesla - imagine his conversation with the DMV.

"Hi, I'd like to deregister my car.""Was it stolen, written off in an accident or did you sell it?""None of those. I launched it into space."*silence*"Um hmm. Sir, I'm going to need to call my supervisor. Our forms don't currently have an option for 'I launched my vehicle to Mars.'"

LOL, like someone actually ever gets through on the phone to a person at the California DMV. Launching rockets to Mars is probably simpler.

Is there some sort of known timeline for how long massive rockets take to develop by private companies?

"Pffft, Elon can't even get his paradigm shattering giant moon rocket ready on time, what a loser"

Is that conversation happening? By who? How many rockets have they launched? Literally unless you were part of the Saturn V team you can't really throw many stones here.

This type of comment is sadly not uncommon. An acquaintance - rather brilliant, teaching at Duke currently - thinks Musk is a great example of how to fail at business. Why? Because he always misses his deadlines. I'll leave the snarky notion that those who can't, teach, at the door.

My response would be simply "how many billion dollar companies have you found, how many industries have you changed".

Even if the Falcon Heavy will not have much use it certainly allowed SpaceX to mature and build massive amount of expertise which will be put to good use when building BFR. I think that BFR would not be possible without going through the "Falcon Heavy loophole" first. So consider Falcon Heavy as a stepping stone to a stronger and more competent SpaceX.

And boy it creates massive amount of respect for SpaceX if they can pull the Falcon Heavy off (the ground)

I imagine that the smaller diameter boosters/engines might also affect the options for reuse (assuming that big engines could only be transported by water after use).

Are those Imperial 'tons' you are referencing in the article? If so, would you mind adding in SI units for future articles as well please?

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A bit of a side question:

I have some memory of reading somewhere that NASA was required to use metric units for all spacecraft from some date onwards due to some past conversion issues. Does anyone know whether I'm remembering that correctly?

I imagine that the smaller diameter boosters/engines might also affect the options for reuse (assuming that big engines could only be transported by water after use).

Are those Imperial 'tons' you are referencing in the article? If so, would you mind adding in SI units for future articles as well please?

--

A bit of a side question:

I have some memory of reading somewhere that NASA was required to use metric units for all spacecraft from some date onwards due to some past conversion issues. Does anyone know whether I'm remembering that correctly?